Subject (and abstract) says pretty much it all. Varous forms of
the document available off of the issues list page. For those of
you involved in drafting text, the easiest way to review they were
incorporated properly is if you can use Microsoft Word 97; if you can, there
are comments attached to each change in the document, and hyperlinks
from the comments back to the issues list to make your reviews easier.
By my count, there are ~20 issues of all sorts still to be completed
(out of 82 in the current count). Most have almost all of the solutiondone
for them. Lets see how many we can reach closure on before Munich, shall we?
I don't plan to read mail again before Monday. Gotta teak a break
after the push to get the draft out. I'll see many of you
in Munich.
Your editor,
- Jim Gettys
Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
Abstract
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application- level
protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information
systems. It is a generic, stateless, object- oriented protocol which
can be used for many tasks, such as name servers and distributed
object management systems, through extension of its request methods. A
feature of HTTP is the typing and negotiation of data representation,
allowing systems to be built independently of the data being
transferred.
HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information
initiative since 1990. This specification defines the protocol
referred to as "HTTP/1.1".
The issues list for HTTP/1.1 can be found at:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/Issues/.
This draft does not resolve all open issues in the HTTP/1.1
specification requiring closure before HTTP/1.1 goes to draft
standard. It does, however, close most of them, and note where in the
document there are still significant issues under discussion. The
best way to view this document is to get a copy of the Word 97
document found at: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.1/diff-v11-
RFC2068to08.doc; all issues are noted as comments in the source
document, with hyperlinks to the Issues list.
The most significant outstanding issue is OPTIONS; there is a separate
internet draft on the topic that you should review NOT incorporated
into this draft (though editorial notes identify where changes may
occur). This draft is draft-ietf-http-options-00.txt.
Also an issue: AGE-CALCULATION; Roy Fielding has issued an ID on the
topic; Jeff Mogul intends to issue a draft as well.
The editorial group is very interested in feedback on the sample table
of requirements in this draft (issue REQUIREMENTS, section 1.9). Is it
useful? How could it be improved?
Open or drafting issues not incorporated into this draft include:
REDIRECTS, ENCODING-NOT-CONNEG, DATE_IF_MODIFIED, 403VS404, PUT-RANGE,
HOST, AGE-CALCULATION, RE- AUTHENTICATION-REQUESTED, VARY
Issues incorporated into this draft where there is still controversy
are noted in bold italic with an editor's note. These are issues:
CONTENT-ENCODING, CACHING-CGI.
Issues incorporated into this draft being working group last called
are: AUTH-CHUNKED, RETRY-AFTER, PROXY-REDIRECT
Closed issues incorporated into this draft include: PROXY-
AUTHORIZATION, PROXY-LENGTH, LANGUAGE-TAG, TSPECIALS, STATUS100,
QZERO, RANGE-ERROR, CLARIFY-NO-CACHE, COMMENT, CONTENT-LOCATION,
QUOTED-BACK, CACHE-CONTRA, CACHE- DIRECTIVE, BYTE-RANGE,
LWS-DELIMITER, CRLF, MAX-AGE, 100DATE, DISPOSITION, CHUNKED, CACHING,
WARNINGS, VERSION, PROXY-MAXAGE, CHARSET-WILDCARD, PADDING,
CONNECTION, RANGES, WARNING-8859, SHOULD-8859, X-BYTERANGES,
MULTIPLE-TRANSFER- CODINGS, LINK_HEADER.
Editorial issues still open include: CLEANUP, UTF-8, URL-SYNTAX,
ENTITY, DOCKDIGEST, 1310_CACHE.
Editorial issues closed include: ACCEPT-RANGES, KEEP-ALIVE, BNFNAME,
KEYWORDS, RESPONSE-VERSION, XREF, COMMON-HEADERS, NO-CACHE, FIX-REF,
PERSIST-CONFUSED, CONNECTION2, GMT-UTC, PROXY-FORWARD, REFERER-SEC,
CHUNK-EXT, REMOVE_19.6, IDEMPOTENT, REF-SIGCOMM, 1521-OBSOLETE,
MESSAGE-BODY
Apologies for the extreme length; Microsoft Word exhibited a fatal bug
whenever trying to adjust margins when converting to ascii text;
therefore, the margins are extreme and the document very long in
ascii. Get the Postscript version off the Issues list!